John Kestner and David Carr created Twine, a 2.5 inch-square device with on-board temperature and vibration sensors, as well as an expansion connector for other sensors, such as moisture sensors and magnetic switches, all tightly integrated through WiFi with a cloud-based service.

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As for the rest of the specs, they include a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, a 4.3-inch capacitive touchscreen, 16GB of on-board storage, 1GB of memory, and an 8 megapixel camera 'round back that's paired with a 3 megapixel front-facing cam.

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Carrying a 4 x 4-inch form factor between a Raspberry Pi and mini-ITX board, it'll be equipped with a Core i3 Ivy Bridge processor, HD 4000 graphics, two SoDIMM sockets, an mSATA slot for an SSD drive, three USB ports, one HDMI port and a mini-PCI slot for wireless connectivity.

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Weighing in at roughly 160g (5.6 ounces) with a 2, 150mAh battery on board, the 8.9mm (0.35 inch) thick handset has an 8-megapixel main camera, a 1.3-megapixel shooter up front, and runs Android 4.1 Jelly Bean as standard.

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When the board met again this week, neither camp was giving an inch.

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At HP's bright, pristine data center in Palo Alto, Calif. customers see 324 computer servers, each shrunk to a circuit board and nested in a stack with 30 to 40 others in 6-foot-6-inch-high cabinets.

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"The fact that the financial system wasn't shaken an inch despite unprecedented incidents ought to be praised, " Hidetoshi Kamezaki, who worked as a BOJ policy-board member with Mr. Shirakawa until April 2012, said recently.

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The main board is the same footprint as Mini-ITX (that's a 6.7-inch square), but it calls for a much shallower construction -- with horizontally stacked RAM and a shorter port cluster to keep the whole thing under an inch tall.

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